Militant moderate, unwilling to concede any longer the terms of debate to the strident ideologues on the fringe. If you are a Democrat or a Republican, you're an ideologue. If you're a "moderate" who votes a nearly straight party-ticket, you're still an ideologue, but you at least have the decency to be ashamed of your ideology. ...and you're lying in the meantime.

Friday, August 19, 2011

You’re Not the Boss of Me

The federal government refuses to enforce immigration laws, so Arizona passed a law to do it themselves. The law allows them to check driver’s licenses during the course of police interactions with individuals. The federal government had a fit over it claiming that Arizona was usurping their authority to enforce federal laws [which it’s not] and sued. Yet the federal government routinely ignores other states which do the same thing [because it’s not], and periodically – like when public sentiment demands it – embarks on federal-state cooperative immigration enforcement programs or simply cuts to the chase and cedes enforcement authority to the states outright.

But generally, the federal government ignores illegal immigration, preferring instead to instruct their Border Patrol agents to ignore a growing portion of those seen dashing from cactus to cactus in the desert southwest on their stop-n-go trek northward. This way, they can justify reporting fewer numbers of detained illegals to Congress and make it seem as if there is less of a problem than there really is. The CBP agents who tattled on their DHS organization in spilling this little political manipulation? They’re treated the same as TSA agents, also under DHS control, who tattle on TSA ... they’re fired.

DHS doesn’t like being criticized it would seem.

Once again, the government agent is allowed – and often instructed – to fail to do the job he was hired to do, but if he tells anyone about any agent failing to do his job, it’s a firing offense.

The depth of governmental dereliction is so great that it attempted to pass a law officially requiring a blind eye toward illegal residents. It has failed several times; most recently earlier this year. The latest attempt would not simply have ignored illegal immigrants, but it would require that Americans who held a job or changed jobs would be required to undergo the pestering E-Verify nonsense. If you’re not supposed to be in this country, you’re fine. But if you were born here and want to live and work here, you need to justify your existence.

Nice.

At any rate, this Blind Eye law, officially called the DREAM Act – because the first dream of all newcomers to this country is to break laws and get away with it – has never been passed by Congress and has never been signed by the President. It is not federal law.

This has been annoying Obama to distraction for three years, and so he has recently instructed his Justice Department – led by Shyster General Eric Holder, who is suing Arizona for making an Arizona law duplicate the federal law Holder refuses to enforce – to treat all illegal aliens in federal custody as if the DREAM Act was law.

Congress says no, and the President says “Congress? Who is Congress?”

The current law declares that anyone caught in this country without proper paperwork is to be sent back home ... after a cursory glance at specifics by a court. The DREAM Act would exclude a whole range of illegals from being sent home by adding a substantial number of other considerations that a court would be required to review. Such as, are they in school? were they brought here by their parents when they were too young to defy parental authority? do they really, really, really want to stay anyhow?

Obama cannot require the courts to consider those extra exclusions, but the US Attorneys working for Shyster General Holder – who works for Obama – can very easily drop deportation actions against whomever it chooses. Which means that those who were elected to enforce our laws, and those who were appointed by them to faithfully represent the nation’s laws enacted in the name of We The People however misguidedly they may be, are willfully refusing to do their jobs. They are doing what they want to do instead.

The United States government, and the presidency thereof, is not supposed to be a sandbox.

This goes beyond the signing statement given by every President since James Monroe, and it’s even beyond the “interpretive” signing statements started by Reagan, peaking under Clinton, and only criticized under Dubya, where the President gives his ceremonial interpretation of the law signaling how he intends to enforce it. This is Obama taking a non-law and commanding it into being by decree. That’s a gall not even FDR possessed – though he came close. Andrew Jackson was the only US president to issue such dictatorial fiat – and on essentially the same topic, although it was in the other direction, compelling Cherokees living legally in the state of Georgia and the Carolinas to pack up and leave, being exiled to the dusty prairies of territorial Oklahoma … already full of other Indians.

Needless to say, Democrats in IL [and undoubtedly NY] are pleased with Obama’s decree: IL [and NY] has a state version of the DREAM Act, which usurps federal authorities by the bucketload in handing government benefits and entitlements to those here in this country illegally. And it would seem to be perfectly fine for state laws to usurp federal authority in defining who is entitled to receive federal benefits and entitlements, for Shyster General Holder has so far refused to sue IL [or NY] for enacting laws which assist illegal immigrants in breaking federal laws; to this point he and his President are only interested in suing those states which enact laws which seek to enforce the federal laws being broken – and unenforced when broken – by those illegal immigrants.

It’s good to be the King. Monarchical titles being forbidden in this country is just one more thing for them to ignore.